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THE ALLIED COUNTRIES 
AND THE JEWS 



THE 

ALLIED COUNTRIES 
AND THE JEWS 



A Series of Addresses by 
Rabbi H. G. Enelow, D.D. 



Block Publishing Company 

New York 

1918 






^K 






"Remember the days of old, consider the years 
of many generations." — Deuteronomy, 

"The dense web of the fortunes of man is woven 
without a void." — Lord Acton. 

"They, hearing History speak, of what men were, 
And have become, are wise." — George Meredith, 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Preface 11 

I. France and the Jews 13 

October 6, 1917 

II. England and the Jews - 23 



'fc> 



October 20, 1917 



III.. Russia and the Jews 37 

November 3, 1917 

IV. Ital}^ and the Jews 49 

November 17, 1917 

V. Palestine and the Jews 63 

December 1, 1917 

VI. America and the Jews 77 

December 15, 1917 

VII. The War, the Jew, and the Future 89 

December 29, 1917 

9 



PREFACE 



The addresses collected in this little book 
were delivered at the Sabbath morning 
Services of Temple Emanu-El during the 
autumn and early winter of 1917-18. I tried 
to give a bird's eye view of the relation of the 
Jews to the several countries with which 
America is now associated in the War for 
the defense of democracy. Also, I tried to 
point out how intimately the advance of 
democracy has been connected with the im- 
provement of the lot of the Jew. Forming 
part of Divine Services, the addresses had to 
be short, but I hope they contained enough 
to illumine the subject and to stimulate 
thought, if not further study, as well as 
patriotic action. 

In the present form, the substance is of- 
fered of the spoken addresses. The address 
on Russia may seem more hopeful than the 
situation today would warrant. Right now, 
unfortunately, chaos reigns in Russia, and 
the Jews are said to suffer terribly. Though 

11 



Trotzky is reported to have renounced all 
affiliation with ihe Jews, or any particular 
interest in them, his changes of fortune are 
likely to react upon the people from which 
he sprang. None the less, we must not 
despair. In the end, Democracy must win in 
Russia, and find a way of living together and 
working together for the numerous racial 
and rehgious groups which form her vast 
population. 

I wish to express my thanks to the Board 
of Trustees of Temple Emanu-El for their 
kindness in publishing these addresses and 
for generously providing a special number 
of copies for distribution among Jewish men 
in our Army and Navy. 

H. G. E. 



Washington's Birthday, 1918. 



12 



FRANCE AND THE JEWS 

EVERY American is now more than ever 
interested in Europe, and especially in 
those countries with which we are associated 
in the War. France, in particular, claims our 
attention. It is for this reason that as Jews 
we cannot help being interested in the rela- 
tion of France to the Jewish people. Many 
of our sons soon will find themselves on 
French soil to take part in the liberation of 
France, which now means part of the defense 
of our own Republic. Not a few of our 
women, also, will be there — are there al- 
ready, engaged in work of rehef and restora- 
tion. It is but proper that we should recall 
what connection has existed between the Jew 
and France. 

France has played an important part in 
Jewish history. There have been Jews in 
France from earliest times, perhaps from 
the very beginning of the Christian era. 

13 



About the middle of the fifth century we 
know definitely that there was a consider- 
able number of Jews in France and that they 
lived on terms of friendship with the rest of 
the population. When Hilary, bishop of 
Aries, died in the year 449, Jews as well as 
Christians wept at his funeral, the Jews 
chanting Psalms in Hebrew. From that 
early age on, France has been a most import- 
ant factor in Jewish history. 

The conditions of life for the Jew have 
not been the same there always. There is the 
usual story of vacillation and misfortune. 
France also has had her periods of persecu- 
tion and expulsion for the Jews — particu- 
larly when she consisted of small provinces 
and factions. There was the usual story of 
malign charges and disputations, and 
Hebrew books now and then were confis- 
cated and burnt as containing attacks on 
Christianity. The public burning of the 
Talmud at Paris, in the year 1242, the sev- 
eral expulsions during the fourteenth cen- 
tury, culminating in the expulsion of 1394 — 
just about a century before the expulsion 
from Spain — are among the tragic incidents 

14 



of medieval Jewish history. France did not 
escape the rehgious fanaticism which formed 
one of the dark features of the middle ages. 
But all in all, the Jews have had a glori- 
ous history in France, crowned by the fact 
that she was the first country in Europe to 
give full civil and political rights to the 
Jews, as she did during the Revolution, on 
September 28th, 1791. France thus inaugu- 
rated a new era in Jewish history. Indeed, 
she thus brought about the modern rebirth 
of the Jew — the Jew's full entry into mod- 
ern life. Therefore, when it is said that 
every man has two countries — his own and 
France, we may justly apply it in particular 
to the modern Jew. 

Nor was the leadership of France in the 
modern emancipation of the Jew an acci- 
dent. It was part of the liberal spirit which 
has found varied expression in France, and 
which could not ignore the Jew and the mal- 
treatment that was meted out to him all over 
Europe. 

When Montesquieu wrote his great work, 
The Spirit of the Laws, in the year 1748, 

15 



he did not forget all the services that the 
Jews had rendered to civilization, nor did he 
fail to deplore the outrageous way the Jews 
were dealt with. The Christians, he affirmed, 
were treating their Jewish neighbors in a 
more inhuman way than the Japanese of 
those days treated the Christians. Readers 
of Montesquieu could not help remembering 
that remonstrance, and it is quite likely that 
Louis XVI was inspired by it to the aboli- 
tion of the Jewish poll-tax, as well as to the 
appointment of a special commission, under 
the presidency of Malesherbes, for the study 
of Jewish conditions, with a view to their 
improvement. 

But it is not commonly known that about 
forty years before Montesquieu issued his 
book, there appeared in France an epoch- 
making work, of which the leading Jewish 
historian, Graetz, has well said that it rend- 
ered an incalculable service to Judaism. 

This work was the History of the Religion 
of the Jews, by Jacques Basnage de Beau- 
val, a celebrated scholar and writer, publish- 
ed in the years 1707-11. It marked the first 
attempt to write a complete history of the 

16 



Jews from the time of Christ to modern 
times, and was designed by the author as 
a continuation of the historical work of 
Josephus. 

It was particularly noteworthy coming 
from a Christian theologian, seeing that the 
conventional Christian view was (and often 
still is ) that the Jewish religion really ceased 
with the coming of Jesus. Christianity was 
supposed to have abolished and eliminated 
Judaism. Yet Basnage realized that the 
contrary was true. Judaism was not dead. 
The Jews were still alive. 

For five years he gave himself to the task 
of collecting material, and he produced a 
work which, whatever its shortcomings, was 
remarkable as the first of its kind, aside from 
the enormous amount of scholarship that 
went into its composition. But there was 
more ihan scholarship in the work; behind 
it was a reahzation of the marvel of Jewish 
history and resentment of the brutality with 
which the Jew was treated. Let no one won- 
der, said the author, if we denounce certain 
charges made against the Jew. "In the 
course of the centuries people have developed 

17 



a spirit of cruelty and barbarism toward the 
Jews. They have been accused of being the 
cause of all calamities and charged with all 
kinds of crimes which never entered their 
minds. Everywhere they have been mobbed 
and massacred. Nevertheless, by a miracle 
of Providence, they still exist today every- 
where. The bush of Moses, encircled by 
flames, has always burnt without being con- 
sumed." 

The liberal spirit of Montesquieu and Bas- 
nage found new expression, and, we may say 
its culmination, in the men of the Revolution. 
Mirabeau, who in Berlin came in contact with 
Mendelssohn and got to know Dohm's fam- 
ous work on the Civil Improvement of the 
Jews, issued in 1781, wrote a warm plea for 
the emancipation of the Jews, under the 
title of Mendelssohn and the Political Im- 
provement of the Jews. His plea was sup- 
ported by Gregoire, a priest, and Duport, a 
Jacobin member of the National Assembly, 
and it finally resulted in the Assembly's 
abrogation of Jewish disabilities, and the 
invitation to the Jews to take the oath of 
citizenship. 

18 



Thus, on September 28tli, 1791, the Jews 
of France were hberated, and the Jews of 
the world celebrated the beginning of a new 
era of freedom and of the opportmiities that 
are bound up with freedom. 

In the spiritual history of the Jew, also, 
France has played an illustrious part. In 
the middle ages there was no country where 
there was so large a number of brilliant and 
erudite scholars, and so energetic an activity, 
as in the numerous Jewish communities of 
France. North and South rivaled each 
other. Some of the most influential Jewish 
teachers of all times came from these French 
schools. 

Think, for instance, of R. Gershom, called 
the Light of the Exile, in the eleventh cen- 
tury, who, though he founded a school at 
Mayence, came from Metz, and continued to 
draw disciples from many parts of France. 
He was one of the chief organizers of me- 
dieval Jewish life. He was the first to pro- 
hibit polygamy among Western Jews. 

Then think of Rashi — the greatest of 
biblical exegetes and commentators. 

19 



At Vitry, on the Marne, was produced the 
most important work on the Jewish Mtm^gy, 
known as Mahzor Vitry, R. Moses of Coucy 
compiled the most popular work on religious 
ordinances, the Sepher Mitzwoth ha-gadol. 

Thus, we might go on and name the illus- 
trious talmudists, and commentators, and 
philosophers of the Jews in France. Though 
each possessed his own characteristics and 
merits, we may justly say that the rabbis of 
France as a class were distinguished for that 
clarity of thought, directness of expression, 
and simple piety which we associate with 
France. 

The Provence, too, was the centre of the 
great translators, who turned the classics of 
Arabic Jewish learning into Hebrew, and 
thus made them accessible to those paints of 
Europe unfamiliar with Arabic. Indeed, to 
this day, thanks to these achievements, the 
spiritual life of Israel the world over is, con- 
sciously or no, under the influence of France. 

When we think of this record, we shall not 
wonder that the Jews of France are devoted 
to their country and prominent in its affairs. 

20 



It was this very prominence of the Jews that 
led some base people to embrace anti-Semit- 
ism, and resulted in the Dreyfus scandal 
some years ago. But nothing shows the char- 
acter of France so clearly as her readiness 
to right a wrong. In the Dreyfus case, too, 
she made amende honorable, and today Cap- 
tain Dreyfus, the martyr of Devils Island, 
Major Dreyfus, as he is now, is actively 
working for the salvation of his country. 

One good result of the War has been the 
cessation of anti-Semitism in France. This is 
demonstrated by such a book as M. Maurice 

Barres's Les diverses families spirituelles de 
la France. Formerly, M. Barres, president 
of the League of Patriots, as well as one of 

the most brilliant writers of France, was an 
anti-Semite. But now that is all over. One 
of his most sympathetic chapters is on the 
Jews — on their loyalty and devotion, and he 
dwells with admiration on the famous inci- 
dent of Rabbi Bloch of Lyons, who, in the 
early days of the War, died on the battle- 
field while offering a crucifix to a dying 
Catholic soldier, being struck by an enemy's 
shell. "Here," he says, "fraternity finds its 

21 



perfect expression. The aged rabbi offering 
to the dying soldier the immortal sign of 
Christ on the cross, this is a picture which 
will not perish." Nor will it perish! 

A long history — full of heroism and 
honor — links the Jew with France. Let us 
hope that the future may add to this splen- 
dor, and that France will ever remain the 
exemplar of liberty, equality, and fraternity, 
and that she will continue to play an import- 
ant part in the si3iritual as well as the secular 
life of Israel! 



22 



II 

ENGLAND AND THE JEWS 

AMONG the allied countries none is more 
JTjL influential than England. It is per- 
fectly natural, therefore, that the name of 
England should be on everybody's lips, and 
that as Jews we should be particularly inter- 
ested in the relation that has existed between 
England and the Jews. 

For years there has been no country in 
the world whose Jewish population had en- 
joyed a position of such great power and 
prosperity, and such perfect recognition, as 
Great Britain. Ever since the middle of the 
nineteenth century has this been the case. 
The Jews of England have occupied posi- 
tions of honor in their own country and its 
colonies, and time and again their influence 
has made it possible for them to come to the 
rescue of their fellow-Jews in other parts of 
the world, as happened, for instance, at the 
time of the blood accusation in Damascus, in 

23 



1840, when Moses Montefiore, with the sup- 
port of the Enghsh government, saved not 
only the Jewish community of that far-off 
city, but also the honor of Israel the world 
over. 

For over half a century the Jews have en- 
joyed such a condition of confidence and 
happiness in England. Only the other day 
I ran across in a German- Jewish journal of 
the year 1866 — Samson Haphael Hirsch's 
Jeshurun — a glowing account of the induc- 
tion of a Jew into the office of Lord Mayor 
of London. It referred to Benjamin Philips, 
who was the second Jew to attain that honor. 
The writer was greatly impressed with the 
marvelous pomp and grandeur of the occa- 
sion, but what struck him above all was this : 
that though the newspapers for days had dis- 
cussed the event, not one of them singled out 
the fact that the new Lord Mayor was a 
Jew. Such perfect naturalization of the 
Jew obtained already in the year 1865, 
though it was only five years after the com- 
plete removal of Jewish disabilities in Eng- 
land. So much more a surprise might it be 
to learn by what a slow and laborious pro- 

24 



cess the Jew won his recognition in England, 
how many centuries the struffffle for his 
emancipation consumed, and that there was 
a time when the Jews of England suffered 
humiliation and persecution unsurpassed in 
any other part of the world. 

As we take a bird's eye view of Israel's his- 
tory in England, we see at once that it falls 
into three distinct periods. 

There is the first period, lasting from the 
arrival of the first Jewish settlers who fol- 
lowed William the Conqueror from the Con- 
tinent, to the expulsion. Who would believe 
today that there was a time when England 
expelled all her Jews? Yet, this is what hap- 
pened in the year 1290. Moreover, when it 
did happen it came as a release and a bless- 
ing, seeing that for more than a century be- 
fore the expulsion the life of the Jew in Eng- 
land was one drawn-out story of persecution 
and every form of misery. It was a century 
during which the Jews of England suffered 
the worst consequences of feudalism, when 
they formed the prey and the sport of kings 
and priests alike, and when they added to 

25 



history some of the most tragic chapters of 
martyrdom for the sake of faith. It was a 
century which began, after a period of com- 
parative security and hapjpiness, with the at- 
tack upon the Jews of London and the pro- 
vinces, at the time of the Coronation of 
Richard I, because the archbishop took 
umbrage at the temerity of some Jewish de- 
legates to the ceremony who ventured within 
the purheus of the cathedral or the palace; 
and with the self-immolation, in the year 
1190, of the whole community of York in the 
tower of that city — one of the most heroic 
incidents in all history. The expulsion thus 
closed mercifully the first period of Jewish 
history in England. 

Then follows the period of the re-admis- 
sion, in the middle of the seventeenth cen- 
tury, under the leadership of Cromwell and 
Menasseh ben Israel, though one is not to 
believe that in the interval there were no 
Jews in England, for there surely were, as 
recent research has shown. 

Finally, we have the third period, which 
began with the gradual removal of Jewish 
disabilities in the nineteenth century. Duj'- 

26 



ing this period we witness the Jews of Eng- 
land taking full part in the life of their 
country and reaching that present-day posi- 
tion which opportunity and complete recog- 
nition and integration in the national Hfe 
have put within their power. 

If today the Jews of England form so 
integral a part of their country, and if they 
are so whole-heartedly and single-mindedly 
devoted to its welfare, it is not merely be- 
cause they feel that they have wrought and 
fought enough for their patrimony, but also 
because they are conscious of their long as- 
sociation with England and her civilization, 
and of the fact that their beginnings on Eng- 
lish soil go back to earliest times, to the very 
time that the Normans came to their shores 
and William the Conqueror invited the Jew 
to follow him to his new domain. 

Yet it would be an error to suppose that 
the emancipation and the attainments of the 
Jews in England were due to mere accident. 
Rather have they been due to certain char- 
acteristics of the Enghsh people, and to those 
tendencies and qualities of English civiliza- 

27 



tion which have made it so distinguished and 
potent in the world. The rise of the Jew in 
England may have been slow, but it has been 
sure, and it came because it was inevitable 
under the conditions that have served to 
make England herself great and strong and 
free. It is these facts we must consider if we 
would understand the ascendency of the Jew 
in England. 

First of all, there is the fact of England's 
democracy. It has often been observed that 
in no country is democracy more widespread 
and secure than in England. One thing is 
certainly true, namely, that England has led 
in the democratization of the world. 

And nothing is more potent a lesson of 
history than that the Jew has always been 
benefited by true democracy. There have 
been autocrats who have been Idnd to the 
Jews, and there have been times when dem- 
ocracy has betrayed the Jew; but these are 
exceptions. As a rule, the cause of Israel in 
the world has gone hand in hand with the 
progress of democracy — of true democracy. 
Democracy has been an invariable aid to the 

28 



Jew, and not because (as practical politic- 
ians assume sometimes) its government de- 
pends on votes, and Jews might command 
votes; not at all, but rather because under 
the protection and in the atmosphere of 
democracy it is easiest for principles to be 
promulgated and for ideals to penetrate. 
When we fight for the cause of democracy, 
when our sons are preparing to shed their 
blood for it, when we are asking for the sup- 
port of it with our wealth and our work, let 
us remember that we are fighting also for 
the cause of Israel in the world. 

That is why the great movement for dem- 
ocratic freedom and justice in England was 
bound to make for the recognition and lib- 
eration of the Jewish soul. That is why 
Cromwell became a champion of the re-ad- 
mission of the Jews to England, and 
namely, of their re-admission on the most 
honorable terms, and not, as some of his 
associates would have it, surreptitiously and 
half-heartedly. 'Naj, that is why, some forty 
years before Cromwell's effort, in the year 
1614, when Leonard Busher wrote his note- 
worthy tract on ''Lihe7^ty of Conscience", he 

29 



demanded that such liberty be extended to 
all alike, including tlie Jews. That is why, 
two centuries later, Thomas B. Macauley 
could not help pleading for the removal of 
the disabilities of the Jews, as he did in 1830 
and 1834, supporting the noble efforts of 
Lord Holland and Robert Grant. That is 
why Gladstone, at first opposed to Jewish 
emancipation, could not help coming over 
to the more liberal view. It was impossible 
for the democratic conscience to affirm itself 
and for the democratic consciousness to grow 
in England, without freedom being granted, 
and justice being done, to the Jew, seeing it 
is for freedom and justice that democracy 
stands. 

Another fact is England's interest in com- 
merce. It is well known that commerce has 
helped make England great. Now, the Jew 
throughout the ages of his history in Europe 
has been one of the most important factors in 
commerce. Everybody knows what historic 
conditions served to bring about this result. 
The fact is that the Jew became perhaps 
the most important commercial factor of 

30 



Europe, which was responsible both for his 
prosperity and persecution. 

England has seldom failed to recognize 
this side of the Jew's importance. This is 
why he was first asked to come to England. 
This is why he was so often traded about by 
the feudal kings. This is why they hated to 
see him go even when they mocked and 
mobbed him. This is chiefly why Cromwell 
wanted him to return, and it is fear of his 
commercial power that often arrayed against 
him his opponents. Often short-sighted 
Englishmen were afraid that by giving 
equality and rights to the Jews, they would 
make it possible for the latter, by their com- 
mercial talent, to overwhelm the rest of the 
population and to absorb all the wealth of 
Britain. It was even feared that the Jews 
would buy up St. Paul's Cathedral and turn 
it into a synagogue! "You say they are the 
meanest and most despised of all people," 
exclaimed Cromwell, at the Conference on 
the Re-admission of the Jews. "So be it! 
But in that case what becomes of your 
fears? Can you really be afraid that this 
contemptible and despised people should be 

31 



able to prevail in trade and credit over the 
merchants of England, the noblest and most 
esteemed merchants of the whole world?" 

Cromwell's indignant question has been 
justified by history. Now, years after their 
complete emancipation, the Jews have not 
yet appropriated all the wealth of England, 
they have not yet dispossessed the rest of 
Britain's population, nor yet has St. Paul's 
been turned into a synagogue. At any rate, 
England's interest in commerce has contri- 
buted greatly to the ascendency of her Jew- 
ish subjects. 

Finally, there is the remarkable kinship 
between the English spirit and the spirit of 
Israel. 

Leroy-Beaulieu, in his celebrated book 
Israel among the Nations, has pointed out 
that the claim of such kinship is made for 
many nations in regard to Israel. But surely 
it is not without reason that some one has 
called England the Israel of Europe. There 
is no modern country that has been saturated 
more thoroughly with the spirit of Israel 
than England. 

32 



No country, for one thing, has been so 
completely influenced by the Bible. The 
English translation of the Eible is an Eng- 
lish classic, as well as Jewish. Insofar as 
the Puritans molded English civilization, it 
meant the introduction of a strong and un- 
mistakable Hebrew influence. It is in Eng- 
land that Biblical learning, of a devout and 
constructive kind, has flourished as nowhere 
else, there that a society for the diffusion of 
the Scriptures first was founded, there that 
most has been done for the exploration of 
Palestine, there that some of the finest col- 
lections of Hebrew books knd manuscripts 
are found (in the British Museum and in the 
Bodleian Library at Oxford) , and there that 
even rabbinical learning has found its most 
earnest and sympathetic devotees among 
non-Jews. 

It would take us far afield to trace the 
relationship between the English spirit and 
that of Israel. But we cannot think of it 
without realizing why some people should 
believe that the English in reality are des- 
cendants of the Ten Tribes, why the intes:ra- 
tion of Israel in English life should have be- 

33 



come so complete, and why the Jew should 
finally have found such appreciation and 
happiness in England. 

How about the future? What effect has 
the War had on the position of the Jew in 
England? 

It is whispered here and there that the 
War had created an increase of anti-Semit- 
ism in England. This is impossible. It is 
true that in the early days of the War some 
sensation-mongers tried to cast aspersions 
on the Jews. It is true, also, that in those 
days a serious problem was created by the 
presence of many Russian Jews who would 
not fight for the old government of Russia, 
thus giving rise to some slurs upon the 
patriotism of the Jews. No less true it is 
that some few fanatical journalists seem to 
regard this as a good time for creating strife 
and spreading anti- Jewish prejudice. But 
the futility of such an enterprise is self-evi- 
dent. 

The Jews of England are as loyal as the 
most loyal. Their best sons were among the 
first volunteers and martyrs. Their ablest 

34 



men are serving in all sorts of positions of 
trust and leadership, and are occupying 
posts of supreme responsibility both at home 
and abroad. Nay more, each and every one 
of them, however lowly and obscure, is ready 
to die for England and her cause. These 
facts speak for themselves, with a voice 
louder than fanaticism and bigotry. 

As long as England remains true to her- 
self — to her democratic spirit, to her spirit 
of enterprise and fair-play, to her spirit of 
Freedom and Righteousness, as long as she 
remains true to that genius for democracy 
that has animated her for centuries, that has 
kept on asserting itself within her against all 
handicaps and impediments, that has kept on 
moving her toward the democratic goal often 
in spite of herself, — as long, I say, as Eng- 
land remains true to democracy, so long will 
Israel be safe and happy under her flag! 



35 



Ill 

RUSSIA AND THE JEWS 

THE ascendency of Russia as a power 
making for democracy is one of the 
miracles of the present War. Who could 
have foreseen five years ago that the country 
suffering under the most despotic autocracy 
of modern times would so suddenly become 
the champion of a most radical democracy? 
Yet, this is what is actually happening to- 
day. Notwithstanding the vacillations and 
frightful uncertainties that still beset Russia, 
she seems destined to play an enormous part 
in the future definition and direction of dem- 
ocracy, and the world may yet learn many a 
lesson from her. This is one of the miracles 
of the War. Under these circumstances, we, 
as Jews, must be doubly interested in the 
story of the relation that has existed between 
Russia and the Jews. 

Only yesterday the name of Russia was 
the synonym of nothing so much as Jewish 

37 



suffering. Persecution has been the well- 
nigh universal lot of the Jew. In even the 
freest and fairest countries he has had to 
endure outlawry and disability. But in no 
other country was he called upon to bear 
persecution so continuous and variegated as 
in old-time Russia. There all the persecu- 
tions of the past seemed to gain repetition 
and culmination. Wherever the Jew turned, 
he found himself hedged in by restrictions 
and humiliations. His dwelling, his educa- 
tion, his occupations — everything was under 
the ban. For centuries he was driven from 
pillar to post and forced to drink the cup of 
calamity to the very dregs. 

When we think of all the misery that the 
Russian Jew had to undergo, we cannot but 
marvel that he should have been able to sur- 
vive it all, and thus to belie the prediction of 
that arch-enemy, Pobiedonostseff, that as a 
result of the laws against them, one third of 
the Jews of Russia would emigrate, one third 
would be baptized, and the rest would perish. 
Thank Heaven, the contrary has come to 
pass: Pobiedonostseff and his kind are 
gone, the autocracy is dead, and the Jew of 

38 



Russia is still there, with a new era before 
him, destined, let us hope, to surpass in gran- 
deur and glory any that has gone before. 

When we consider the story of those horri- 
ble persecutions, we find that the chief ex- 
cuse for them was the charge that the Jew 
was not a true Russian, but a stranger. Yet, 
this charge was fundamentally false. It is 
only necessary to think of the Jew's history, 
to realize that he is as little a stranger in 
Russia as any other part of the population. 

The Jew's beginnings in many parts of 
Russia go back to the very earhest times — 
in some instances beyond the records of his- 
tory. It is true that a large part of her Jew- 
ish population Russia acquired in the year 
1772, and subsequent years, as a result of 
the division of Poland. But in other parts 
of Russia, the presence of Jews is of much 
more ancient date. 

In Kieff, the mother of cities to the Rus- 
sian, Jews were settled as far back as the 
eighth or ninth century — some holding that 
they came there with the Khazars, who are 
supposed to have founded Kieff. In the 

39 



centuries following the Jews worked and 
traded and flourished there and held import- 
ant official positions, so much so that by the 
sixteenth century Kieff became a centre of 
Jewish learning, with the motto: "From 
Kieff shall go forth the law." 

As for the Crimea — the beautiful povince 
to which the deposed Czar was so eager to be 
sent — its Jewish settlements date back to 
Hellenic days, when the Greeks began to 
found commercial centres on the shores of 
the Black Sea, and Jews from the Byzantine 
Empire, as well as from Persia and the 
Caucasus, came along with them, establish- 
ing communities with synagogues and ceme- 
teries and other institutions, as we know 
from recently discovered inscriptions, which 
go back to the first century. 

Similarly, we have early accounts of Jews 
going and coming in Novgorod and Moscow 
— Jews speaking the Slavic dialect and ante- 
dating by many years those from Western 
Europe who came to Russia as a result of 
persecutions in Germany and elsewhere, and 
who brought with them their German speech. 
When we examine these records, we can see 

40 



how ancient is the Hneage of the Jew in Rus- 
sia and how groundless, as well as vicious, 
was the theory of those who maintained that 
the Jew of Russia had to be repressed and 
oppressed for the reason that he was a 
stranger in the land. 

There has never been a more complete, nor 
a more wonderful, transformation than the 
one wrought by the Russian Revolution in 
the condition of the Jew. One of the first 
consequences of the Revolution was the abo- 
lition of Jewish disabilities, the specific abro- 
gation of all Jewish restrictons, the repudia- 
tion of all the laws and regulations against 
them that centuries had accumulated — the 
instant recognition of the Jew. It is noth- 
ing short of marvellous to think that today 
Jews are found in the highest positions in 
Russia — in the Senate, which means their 
Supreme Court, in the pohce administration, 
in the army, and on most responsible com- 
missions to foreign lands. Magic could have 
wrought no more marvellous change. 

Yet, it would be wrong to think that all 
this has no connection with the previous life 

41 



and conduct of the Jew of Russia. On the 
contrary, the student of the history of the 
Russian Jew cannot help recognizing the 
intimate relation between the life and the 
achievements of the Russian Jew in the past 
and the recognition that has come to him at 
the very dawn of the new age. Here, too, 
there has been no exception to the normal 
operation of historic law. 

If the Jew of Russia has been adopted 
so promptly and so fully into the new-born 
Russian democracy, it is because in the past 
he has shown his mettle, because his whole 
record has demonstrated his civic worth, and 
because his character and his attainments 
even under the worst possible conditions 
demonstrated what he was capable of being 
and doing once he was given that boon of 
recognition and opportunity which it is the 
aim of democracy to bring to all men. 

This the Jew of Russia has shown, first of 
all, by his spiritual life. The Russian poet 
Pushkin has said that glass is shattered by 
blows, but iron is thus made the stronger. 
This saying has been properly apphed to the 

42 



effect of persecution upon the character of 
the Russian Jew. 

Nothing is more remarkable than the 
spiritual history of the Jew in Russia. The 
Russian Jew has been proud of his Judaism, 
and devoted to it. Nowhere else do we find 
from the very beginning so great a readiness 
to propagate his ideas. It is remarkable that 
in Russia, of all countries, we find the Jewish 
influence reaching out the farthest into the 
non- Jewish world. 

Nestor, the old Russian chronicler, relates 
that in the tenth century the Jews came to 
Kieff in order to convert to their religion the 
Grand Duke Vladimir. As a matter of fact, 
the Khazars, a people living in southern 
Russia, did become Jews in the eighth cen- 
tury, and remained such for a couple of cen- 
turies. In the sixteenth century the Judaistic 
sect sprang up in Novgorod and spread to 
the very monasteries of Moscow, and in one 
form or another, in spite of many efforts to 
suppress it, it has not ceased to this very day. 
Perhaps it is this persistence of the Jewish 
spirit and spread of Jewish influence that 
made the autocracy fear the Jew as a menace 
to Christianity. 

43 



Even more important, however, has been 
the spiritual hfe of the Jewish community 
itself. It has thrived despite persecution. It 
has created centres of learning, scholars, 
saints, and above all masses of learned and 
saintly men and women, which both in num- 
ber and character have never been surpassed 
in the whole heroic range of Jewish history. 
It is this spiritual life of the Jew of Russia 
— devout, loyal, God - intoxicated — that 
could not help but excite the admiration, and 
ultimately to gain the recognition, of the 
world. 

Then, there is the contribution that the 
Jew has made to the life and civilization of 
Russia and of other countries. One of the 
charges of his enemies was that the Jew of 
Russia was not a useful subject — that he 
was a menace to his neighbors. In vain writ- 
ers and statesmen of enlightenment sought 
to expose the falsehood of this charge; in 
vain they insisted that whatever was wrong 
with the Jew was due to the restrictions and 
discriminations that were placed upon him; 
in vain did such men as Count Uvarov, as far 

44 



back as the year 1841, and Alexander Stro- 
ganov, in 1858, demand the creation of edu- 
cational f acihties, and even complete emanci- 
pation, for the Jews in their interest as well 
as for the common good. The dread and the 
tyranny of the autocracy could not be over- 
come. 

Fortunately, the Jew did not allow him- 
self to be wholly crushed by these calumnies 
and calamities. He went on using his powers 
to the utmost. He grasped education where- 
ever he could find it. He became an import- 
ant factor in the literary, in the artistic, in 
the musical, in the commercial and industrial 
life of Russia — producing an Antokolsky, a 
Rubinstein, a Frug, the Polyakoffs and the 
Ginzburgs, and no end of others, to say noth- 
ing of the vast new Hebrew literature he has 
created, including the names of such genuine 
poets as Lebenson, Gordon, and Byalik, 
while the rest of the world has been so vastly 
enriched by the work of Russian Jewish 
exiles that it is no exaggeration to say that 
they have covered the face of the earth with 
the fruits of their spirit. 



45 



Nor must we forget the ineradicable 
patriotism of the Russian Jew. Often under 
the old regime people asked how it was pos- 
sible for the Jew of Russia to be patriotic. 
The answer is that no matter what made it 
possible, the Jew of Russia was patriotic. 
Though he may have had grievances against 
the autocracy and its agents, he loved his 
country none the less and in war and in peace 
he was there to show it. 

As far back as the Russian War of Lib- 
eration, in 1812, the Jew so distinguished 
himself in the Russian army, that he evoked 
the praise and satisfaction of Alexander I, 
who was fortified thereby in his good inten- 
tions toward the Jew ; unfortunately thwart- 
ed later on by hostile influences and rehgious 
apprehensions. 

Similar patriotism the Jews have shown 
on all other occasions, including the present 
War. As for the fight for liberty and the 
Russian revolutionary movement, the Jews 
have played a leading part in it, shrinking 
not from its severities and hardships, and 
this they have done not only for their own 
sake, but for the common good. 

46 



Thus, we can see that the vindication and 
recognition of the Jew of Kussia today are 
not without their roots in the hfe of yester- 
day. They are the efflorescence of his spirit- 
ual Hfe — of his contribution to the hfe of 
his country and other countries — of his 
inahenable patriotism. "The Revolution," 
Kerensky has said, "is the expiation of the 
past and its sins." It may well form such an 
expiation to the Jew ! 

How about the future? It would be idle 
to deny that the peril is not yet past. The 
Jew of Kussia is not yet out of the woods. 
But neither is Russia as a whole. As long as 
reaction and anarchy threaten, there is dan- 
ger for the Jew. But in this regard the Jew 
of Russia must take his chance with the rest. 
His fate is bound up with the complete 
triumph of democracy in Russia — dem- 
ocracy founded on self-discipline, self-sacri- 
fice, and service, toward the firm establishing 
of which she is still struggling. If we would 
help the Jew, we must do what we can to- 
ward the help of Russian democracy. Let 
democracy triumph in Russia, and it will 
mean the triumph of the Jew ! 

47 



IV 
ITALY AND THE JEWS 

WITHIN the last few days our atten- 
tion has been focused upon Italy, be- 
cause of the reverses which have befallen her 
army, so soon after its notable heroic 
achievements. Knowing the innate courage 
and heroism of the Italians, we must hope 
that their military misfortunes are only tem- 
porary. Meantime, this situation serves to 
increase our interest in the relation that has 
existed between Italy and the Jews — a ques- 
tion which our association with her in the 
present world- struggle has brought to the 
fore. 

It is well to remember that the Jewish 
community of Italy is the oldest Jewish com- 
munity of Europe. Moreover, if the origin 
of the Jews in other countries is shrouded in 
mist, this is not the case here. The full light 
of history illumines the earliest period of 
Jewish life in Italy. 

49 



In Talmudic literature we read of the 
journeys of famous rabbis to Home and of 
their activities there ; in the New Testament 
we hear of the Jews of Italy, and of their 
synagogues, which formed the scene of 
activity for the founders of the new faith ; in 
Philo, the great Jewish writer of the first 
century, we have a description of the Jewish 
community of Rome in the days of Augus- 
tus, with references to their coromunal life 
and religious observances. Similarly, there 
is an allusion to the Jews, their number and 
their influence, at Home, in one of Cicero's 
famous orations. 

All this teaches us in unmistakable lan- 
guage that even before the beginning of the 
Christian era, Jews in considerable numbers 
estabhshed themselves in the capital of the 
Roman empire, and that before long they 
attained to a position of marked prosperity 
and power, thanks not only to their own in- 
dustry and intelligence, but also to the good- 
will of some of the emperors. When Caesar 
died, it is said, the Jews kept vigil at his tomb 
for three nights. 



50 



But the history of the Jews in Italy is re- 
markable not only for its antiquity. It is 
remarkable also for its uninterrupted glory 
and magnificence. Italy, it has been said, is 
the one country in which there has never 
been such a thing as Jewish persecution on a 
large scale. In England and in France there 
were periods when the Jews were banished. 
In Italy they were spared such a wholesale 
calamity. 

This is not to say that the Jews of Italy 
were not called upon time and again to face 
hardship and misery. This is not to say that 
now and then one city or another did not try 
to expel them. ISTor is this meant to cover up 
the fact that in Rome, from the year 1555 to 
the year 1848, the Jews were made to live in 
a ghetto, which contributed beyond measure 
to their material and spiritual degradation. 
In Italy, as everywhere else, the Jews had 
more than their share of sorrow and misery 
to endure, owing to the fanaticism of popes 
and the vacillation of the masses. But the 
one thing that never did occur was a whole- 
sale expulsion of the Jews from all her do- 
main, similar to the one from England in 

51 



1290, from France in 1393, and from Spain 
in 1492. 

As a result, the history of the Jews of 
Italy affords today a record of uninterrupt- 
ed activity and glory, extending over more 
than the entire period of Christian history. 
In every century of Itahan Jewish history, 
we find men and movements of importance, 
bearing witness to the energy of the Jew 
and to the opportunities for its exercise. 
And this long period of the past is worthily 
crowned by the position that the Jews occupy 
in the Italy of today. Though their number 
is small, there being but about forty thou- 
sand of them in Italy, their influence is strik- 
ing, seeing that in every sphere they have 
risen to exalted positions, unsurpassed, in 
this respect, if equalled, by their brethren 
in any other part of the world. 

When we try to account for this, various 
facts have to be considered. First, there is 
the condition of the country. Then, the char- 
acter of the people. And, finally, the part 
of the Jew himself. 

52 



For hundreds of years Italy was broken 
up into many independent towns and rival 
principalities, competing and contending 
with one another, which frequently proved to 
the advantage of the Jew, who, when driven 
from one part, found refuge in another. 
Then, the Italians have always been known 
for their love of liberty and justice, of edu- 
cation and enlightenment, in addition to 
being a pre-eminently practical and com- 
mercial people. This, in its turn, could not 
help but make them hospitable to the Jews. 

But all this would not have availed to 
make the history of Israel in Italy illustrious 
were it not for the Jews themselves and for 
what they have accomplished in various 
spheres. It is these latter things particularly 
that we must consider in a survey of the 
Jew's history in Italy. 

There is, first of all, the part of the Jew 
in the commerce of Italy, as well as in her 
industries. 

This we may name first, because history 
makes it quite clear that the Jews were first 

53 



welcomed and appreciated in Kome and her 
dependencies and neighbor-cities because of 
their commercial ingenuity and enterprise. 
Well, there is good reason for believing that 
as far back as Augustus, the Jews had be- 
gun to play an important part as commercial 
factors between Italy and other countries. 

In the middle ages, however, they became 
the commonly recognized bankers of Italy, 
particularly in the southern parts, so much 
so that in some cases the Jews were even 
compelled to maintain banks and in some 
instances their doing so was made part of 
diplomatic treaties between cities, as when 
Venice making an alliance with Ravenna, in 
the fifteenth century, it was stipulated by 
Havenna that the Jews should conduct a 
bank there, and in one case, at least, on rec- 
ord, in Gubbio, a Jew was paid a salary by 
the city for maintaining a bank. In this way 
the Jews were expected to contribute to the 
trade of the town and the relief of the needy, 
though in the course of time they were called 
usurers for engaging in this sort of business, 
and it was made the cause of propaganda 
against them, and of persecution. 

54 



Nor is it fair to suppose that the Jews of 
Italy were merely engaged in money-lending 
and commerce. History tells us that they 
were also largely represented in the various 
trades and industries. The dye-making in- 
dustry formed one of the chief occupations of 
the Jews of Italy in the thirteenth century. 
In Sicily, documents relate, almost all iron 
workers were Jews. In Sardinia there were 
among the Jews so many blacksmiths, 
locksmiths, weavers, and silversmiths that 
Ferdinand the Cathohc felt impelled to make 
a law against their plying their noisy trades 
on Christian holidays. 

It is hard for some people to get away 
from the notion that the Jew is nothing but 
a merchant. No matter how much they hear 
of tens of thousands of Jews engaged in vari- 
ous trades, to the extent of having trade 
unions of their own, they still cling to their 
preposterous notion that the Jews are a 
people of merchants only, (though every 
now and then they will change their tune 
and charge all Jews with being sociahsts, 
which certainly is not the special character- 
istic of merchants). 

55 



It is equally wrong to assume that in the 
Italy of the past, the Jews were only bank- 
ers and merchants; no, they were also 
artisans, engaged in all kinds of trades, in- 
cluding agriculture, and as such they were 
of vast importance to their country. 

If the Jews of Italy are said to have in- 
vented the letter of credit, thanks to Jewish 
immigrants in Lombardy possessing valu- 
able interests in other countries from which 
they had been expelled, and thus to have 
added an important instrument to the con- 
duct of commerce, they were no less con- 
spicuous in the diverse manual occupations. 
And the Itahans, knowing the value of com- 
merce and the crafts, stood ready to appre- 
ciate the worth of the Jew. 

'No less remarkable has been the spiritual 
history of the Jews of Italy. Macauley de- 
picts the Italians as possessing a spirit so 
proud and fine as to make them equally emi- 
nent in the active and the contemplative Hf e. 
Even if this description did not happen to 
apply to all Jews, it certainly would be ap- 
pHcable to the Jews of Italy. What would 

56 



all their distinction in the industrial and com- 
mercial hf e have signified if they had failed 
to maintain their spiritual ideals? As a mat- 
ter of fact, it is herein that the Jews of Italy 
have been especially fortunate. 

From the very beginning to this day, as a 
French writer has put it, the fire has never 
died out upon their altars. They were always 
among the leaders in Jewish learning and 
loyalty. Their rabbis were among the most 
famous in the world. Some of their works 
are among the great classics of Jewish 
scholarship — such as the Arukh^ the great 
Talmudic cyclopedia of Rabbi Nathan of 
Rome, or the Malmad, the popular homiletic 
work of Rabbi Jacob Anatoli, or the Mesi- 
loth Yesharim^ the celebrated ethical treatise 
of Hayyim David Luzzatto. Some of their 
poets are among the most famous and per- 
manent, like the satirist Immanuel of Rome, 
said to have been the friend of Dante. 

Perhaps nothing testifies so clearly to the 
intellectual and spiritual energy of the 
ItaKan Jews as the promptness with which 
they adopted the art of printing and the vast 
number of Hebrew books they issued soon 

57 



after the invention of the art. The first 
Hebrew printed works appeared in 1475-76, 
and in the sixteenth century Ferrara, Bo- 
logna, Naples, Cremona, Mantua, became 
veritable centres for the publication of 
Hebrew Bibles, the Talmud, the Zohar, and 
other rabbinic works. It is interesting to 
note that the first Spanish translation of the 
Old Testament appeared in Ferrara, and 
was the work of a Jewish exile, who by the 
maltreatment of Spain was not estranged 
from the love of her language. 

Moreover, the culture of the Jews of Italy 
even centuries ago had something that was 
lacking among their contemporaries else- 
where — it had breadth, resulting from con- 
tact with a cultivated and enlightened peo- 
ple. Some of the foremost rabbis were also 
physicians, and were sought as such by 
popes, princes, cardinals, and other men of 
distinction. 

Frequently, we find Jewish scholars acting 
as teachers and translators for eminent 
Christian scholars and patrons of learning, 
as, for instance, Jacob Anatoli, Leo Modena, 
Elijah Levita, and others. 

58 



This breadth of culture is the reason why 
some of their finest works were written in 
Itahan, such as The Dialogues of Love by 
Leo Hebreo, in the beginning of the six- 
teenth century, and several of the rehgious 
and ethical treatises of such celebrated 
scholars as Leo Modena, Samuel David Luz- 
zatto, and EHa Benamozegh. For breadth, 
as well as versatihty, the products of Israel's 
spiritual genius in Italy have never been ex- 
celled. 

Finally, one cannot study the history of 
the Jew in Italy without realizing the depth 
and ardor of his patriotism. "From the 
lowest to the highest," an Italian writer has 
said, "the Itahan is always a patriot." This 
certainly may be affirmed of the Italian Jew. 
He has always stood for Italy, and been 
ready to defend her with his blood. 

When in the year 536, Belizar, the com- 
mander of Justinian I, besieged Naples, it 
was the Jews who opposed the surrender of 
the city, and offered not only to participate 
in the defense, but to support the population 
with money during the siege. To them was 

59 



assigned the defense of the most dangerous 
section of the city, facing the sea, and 
when the city was captured they were made 
to pay most severely for their patriotism. 
And the example of those heroic patriots was 
followed repeatedly by the Jews of Italy. 
It is such patriotism that made them defend- 
ers of Rome when Louis Napoleon sent an 
army corps against it in behalf of the Pope, 
and such patriotism that made them take 
such a prominent part, under Cavour and 
Mazzini and Garibaldi, in the days of the 
Hisorgimento, in the struggle that led finally 
to the emancipation and unification of Italy. 
No wonder, then, that Italy had no sooner 
won her hberty and unity than she paid due 
tribute to the patriotism of her Jewish citi- 
zens and gave them that complete emancipa- 
tion to which their whole history had entitled 
them and for which even some of the most 
eminent non-Jews had pleaded for many a 
day — non-Jews whose spirit of justice and 
freedom was sublimely symboHzed by that 
noble priest. Father Ambrosoh, who, in the 
Passover night of 1848, when the walls of 
the ghetto were demolished, was seen amid 

60 



the crowd, holding under his cloak a crucifix, 
which he was ready to upHft as an emblem of 
love and brotherhood in case of any hostile 
demonstration against the Jews. 

What good use the Jew of Italy has made 
of his new-found liberty, the record of the 
years since 1870 tells eloquently! In the 
sciences, in the arts, in philosophy, in public 
service — as diplomats and ministers of State 
— in every sphere, the Jews of Italy have 
become an honor to themselves as well as to 
their country. 



In Rome you may see today a beautiful 
new Temple erected on the ruins of the old 
ghetto. In the vestibule there is a tablet 
commemorating its dedication, in the pres- 
ence of the King of Italy, and reciting the 
fact of its erection on the spot where form- 
erly stood the walls of the ghetto. When I 
saw it several years ago, I was deeply im- 
pressed with the beauty of the structure and 
the loyalty that reared it among those squalid 
but historic surroundings. 

This Temple is a symbol. It is a symbol 
of the ancient character of the Itahan Jewry. 

6t 



It is a symbol of its loyalty. But above all, 
it is a symbol of the liberty and happiness 
that the advance of democracy has brought 
to the Jew of Italy, as well as of other lands. 
It inspires us with the hope that so long as 
Italy remains true to the cause of democracy, 
which is the cause of justice and enhghten- 
ment, so long will the Jew be free and safe 
and happy within her borders! 



62 



PALESTINE AND THE JEWS 

ONE could not read without a thrill the 
news of the recent advance of the Brit- 
ish army in Palestine. The Holy Land thus 
is gradually passing under the control of the 
AlHes, and its destiny is growing of particu- 
lar moment to everybody interested in the 
outcome of the War. To the Jew, however, 
this becomes a particular occasion for a con- 
sideration of the relation of Palestine to the 
Jews. 

In the study of the past of the Jewish 
people, we come across different countries 
that have played an important part in Jew- 
ish history. In France, in England, in Rus- 
sia, in Italy, in Spain — in all these countries 
are imbedded important parts and periods 
of Jewish history. But no country can com- 
pare to Palestine in this respect. 

In a way, Israel and Palestine are in- 
separable. They are synonymous. In the 

63 



Hebrew tongue, Palestine is called the Land 
of Israel, the name Palestine having been 
first used by Philo and Josephus, and by the 
Romans, and really being derived from the 
PhiHstines, who, in ancient times, fought 
against the Jews for the possession of this 
fertile and beautiful country. 

It is true that after the destruction of the 
Jewish State by the Romans, in the year 70, 
and especially after the failure of the last 
struggle for independence under Rabbi 
Akiba and Bar Kochba, the number of Jews 
in Palestine decreased, and their part in it 
grew less and less significant. 

It is true that for centuries Palestine was 
almost emptied of Jewish inhabitants, and 
such as were left were reduced to a life of 
penury and desolation. It is also true that in 
the course of history Palestine has changed 
masters frequently, having been in the 
possession of the various Canaanite tribes 
before the coming of Israel, and since the 
fall of the Jewish State passing through the 
hands of Romans, Christians, and Turks. 
Yet, on the other hand, it is no less true that 
the classic period of Jewish history is asso- 

64 



dated with the name of Palestine, just as the 
classic period of Palestine is indissolubly 
bound up with the name of Israel. 

Archeologists may unearth in Palestine 
remnants of a civihzation that antedated by 
centuries, perhaps by thousands of years, the 
coming of the Hebrews, and historians may 
trace the fate of Palestine since the banish- 
ment of the Jews, from Titus to the Turks ; 
but the most glorious and most important 
section of the story of Palestine is the period 
of its occupation by Israel. Similarly, we 
may relate and rejoice in Israel's achieve- 
ments the world over, and in the wonderful 
capacity the Jew has shown in all countries 
for growth and grandeur ; yet none can deny 
that the paramount period of Jewish history 
coincides with the Jew's hfe in Palestine — 
where his character developed, where his 
prophets taught, and where the conscious- 
ness of his unity and eternal purpose took 
possession of his soul. 

"Is there not something," asks Mr. Watts- 
Dunton, "in the very soil upon which we are 
born, in the very atmosphere above it, that 
aids in molding our characters, if not our 

65 



destinies?" In the case of Israel this question 
must be answered in the affirmative. Histo- 
rians agree that the character of Palestine 
had much to do with the molding of the char- 
acter of the Jewish people and directing its 
destiny. Such diverse scholars as Solomon 
Judah Rap op or t, the celebrated rabbi of 
Prague, and Miss Ellen Churchill Semple, 
the eminent American representative of An- 
thropologic geography, agree in this view. 
It is for this reason that w^e have a right to 
say, with the ancient rabbis, that Palestine 
and Israel are inseparable. 

Moreover, it is an error to assume that 
when the Jews were forced to leave Pales- 
tine, first by the Romans, and then by the 
various foes of Israel who seized it, it ceased 
to play a part in their lives. There are those 
who beheve that in the life of human beings 
two sentiments, or forces, mean a great deal 
more than the actualities of the moment, 
namely, memory and hope. How often do 
not these two — memory and hope — mean 
more to us than the experience of the 
present? 
This is what happened to the Jew in regard 

66 



to Palestine after he was driven from its pur- 
lieus. He kept on clinging to it, as both his 
most cherished memory and most precious 
hope. It was the favorite theme of his medi- 
tations. It was the central subject of his 
prayers. It was the inspiration of his Muse. 
Never poet wrote more fervid poems of love 
than those the medieval poets of Israel ad- 
dressed to Zion. 

Throughout the ages Palestine continued 
to form the heart of Jewish theology and 
optimism. Time and again Rabbis of piety 
and prominence sought to make it anew the 
centre of religious scholarship and spiritual 
authority, as did Habbi Joseph Caro in the 
sixteenth century, and though they failed, 
they personified the Jews undying love for 
the Holy Land. 

It is this profound and indestructible love 
that Judah Halevi voiced in that elegy of 
wondrous beauty and pathos, which burst 
from his soul when, as an aged man, having 
left behind him all that was dear to him in 
his native Spain, he journeyed, in the year 
1140, to Zion, to behold her desolated beauty 
and to kiss the dust of her stones. And this 

67 



love has been shared by Jews everywhere 
throughout the ages. 

"The cradle of oui' hves," says Mr. Watts- 
Dunton, "draws us to itself wherever we 
go." This has certainly been true of Israel. 
The cradle of his history, Palestine, has 
drawn him to itself, wherever he went. It 
remained his dream, the land of mystic love 
and longing, and as such it was even more 
beautiful, more precious in his eyes than 
when his in reality. 

It is remarkable, however, that in recent 
years the dream again has begun to turn into 
a reahty. After a forsaking of hundreds 
of years, with but scant interruption, Pales- 
tine again has become a centre of Jewish 
habitation and happiness. The story of this 
renewal is one of the most stirring, and most 
romantic, in the variegated history of the 
Jew. 

For these many centuries the Jew had 
dreamed and prayed for Palestine. It 
had been the theme of his reveries. But 
it was forty years ago that men arose and 
decided that the time had come for mak- 

68 



ing the dream come true. In different quar- 
ters the plan was advanced for settling Jews 
on the soil of Palestine, in order thus to re- 
store the ancient land and also to help solve 
the problem of Jewish persecution and dis- 
tress. It is noteworthy that among the pio- 
neers of this plan were not only Jews, but 
also Christians, such as Warder Cresson, the 
first American consul in Jerusalem, who be- 
came a convert to Judaism, and Laurence 
OKphant, the English philanthropist, who 
was unofficially supported by Lord Beacons- 
field and Lord Salisbury. 

The persecutions in Russia and Rumania 
emphasized the need of some radical measure 
for the improvement of the Jewish situation. 
Thus, in 1870, we see the beginning of a new 
Jewish colonization in Palestine by the 
founding of an agricultural school, Mikweh 
Israel, which is followed in 1878 by the 
founding of the colony Petah Tikwa, and 
in 1882 by the colony Rishon Le-Zion. 

The men who founded these colonies were 
real pioneers; they had the ideals and the 
courage and the self-sacrifice of real pio- 
neers, and no one can read their story with- 

69 



out marveling at their endurance and 
achievements. It was their valiant struggle 
that led to the organization of the Hoveve 
Zion Societies in Russia and England and 
other countries. It also gained for them the 
support of the Alliance Israelite Universelle, 
and particularly the devoted and generous 
assistance of Baron Edmond de Kothschild, 
whose munificence saved the movement in its 
most critical period. As a result, numerous 
sections of the Holy Land have been re- 
claimed from the waste of centuries, and 
there were before the War prosperous Jew- 
ish colonies in Judea, in Galilee, and beyond 
the Jordan, noted for the bounty and variety 
of their products, as well as for the health 
and happiness of their inhabitants. 

It is customary nowadays to give credit 
for all this renewal of Palestine to the Zion- 
ists. Nor does it matter particularly as to 
who gets the credit. But it is an historic 
fact that Dr. Herzl conceived the idea of a 
Jewish State some twenty-five years after 
the first Jewish Agricultural School had 
been founded in Palestine and Jewish colon- 
ization had begun. And it is further an his- 

70 



toric fact that Dr. Herzl and his followers 
for years opposed the continuation of the 
colonizing activity, seeing that their plan 
was pohtical and they insisted that unless the 
Jews first got a Charter to Palestine, they 
must not go on with the reclamation and im- 
provement of the land. 

However, it would lead us too far afield 
to pursue this phase of the subject. Suflice 
to say that it was the political emphasis of 
the Zionists, coupled with the anti-religious 
attitude of some of their leaders, that served 
to create friction in Israel and to alienate 
for the time being from the movement for the 
reclamation of Palestine some of the most 
devoted lovers of the Holy Land. 

Latterly, however, the practical work was 
taken up anew, and it is thanks to this work, 
promoted partly by some prominent men 
both here and in Europe who are not at all 
votaries of political Zionism, that Palestine 
has witnessed such a physical and spiritual 
renewal at the hands of the Jewish people. 

What the War, with its ravages, has done 
to the new life of Palestine, we do not know 

71 



as yet. But it is natural to ask what the 
future of Palestine shall be. The British army 
is now going forward in Palestine, thus 
bringing to an end the Turkish rule which 
began just four hundred years ago, when 
Selim I conquered Egypt and Syria. It is 
impossible to ignore the important role that 
Palestine is destined to play in the future. 
Its industrial and commercial possibilities 
are enormous. Now, as ever, it is on the high- 
way connecting Europe with Asia and 
Africa. With the increasing importance of 
the East, the value of Palestine is bound to 
grow. 

But there is one essential condition : Pales- 
tine needs a population. And there can be 
no doubt that none would form so fitting a 
population for Palestine as Jews eager to 
go there and eager to restore the sacred soil. 

It is in this hght that we ought to view 
Mr. Balfour's recent declaration. If it 
proves possible, under solemn guarantees of 
the nations, to permit Jews to settle in Pales- 
tine, and to live there in security, we may be 
sure that many Jews wiU flock thither, and 
that they will consecrate all their energies 

72 



to the restoration of the land so dear to every 
true Jewish heart. And thus Palestine would 
not only become again an important factor 
in Jewish life; it would become again a 
centre of material and spiritual riches, a land 
flowing as of old with milk and honey, and a 
stronghold of Justice and Righteousness, 
which are the core of Democracy. 

For that end, however, we ought to put a 
stop to disputes about Zionism and anti- 
Zionism. Particularly, ought we to put a 
stop to such controversies carried on in the 
name of Reform Judaism. Reform Judaism 
is not bound up with anti-Zionism, or anti- 
Palestinism. Certainly Reform Judaism is 
not, and never can be, opposed to the restora- 
tion of Palestine. Some prominent Reform 
rabbis have been sincere behevers in even the 
restoration of the Jewish State in Palestine, 
as, for instance, Samuel Hirsch, one of the 
most radical of Reform rabbis, who as far 
back as 1842, in his addresses on "The 
Messianic Doctrine of the Jews," dwelt on 
that belief as an essential part of Jewish con- 
viction and hope. 

73 



Some others have refrained from engag- 
ing in controversy with the Zionists, though 
whenever necessary they have not failed to 
maintain against them these three essential 
propositions: first, that we dare not mort- 
gage the Jewish future to a Jewish State in 
Palestine; secondly, that there is no such 
thing possible as a Jewish people without 
Judaism; and, thirdly, that it is wrong to 
assume that Judaism cannot flourish outside 
of Palestine. But all this has nothing to do 
with the restoration of Palestine and mak- 
ing it a centre for Israel and humanity, if we 
can do it. 

Let us, therefore, for once realize that 
Israel is greater than Zionism, and Palestine 
more important than parties. Let us unite 
for the common good! It is because of divi- 
sions and disputations, the rabbis tell us, 
Jerusalem was lost ; let us not permit a simi- 
lar cause to keep us from restoring it — I 
don't mean as the capital of a Jewish State, 
but as a centre of Jewish energy and revival. 
Let us work toward Jewish unification, 
which, the rabbis believe, must precede re- 
demption. And thus let us help secure for 

74 



Palestine also the benefits of that democracy, 
that rule of Hberty and justice, that cause of 
human hberation and opportunity, to the 
triumph of which America has pledged so 
nobly her life and her strength. 



75 



VI 

AMERICA AND THE JEWS 

AMERICA has often been described as 
the land of opportunity and of unhmited 
possibihties. This is one reason why since 
our entry into the War, the eyes of the 
whole world have been fixed upon us. It is 
certainly true that to no group of people has 
America proved more truly a land of oppor- 
tunity than to the Jews. A mere survey of 
the American period of Jewish history is suf- 
ficient to convince us of this, and such a sur- 
vey is especially appropriate at present when 
the history of the world is being recast and 
remade, and the future destiny of both 
America and the Jew is a subject of frequent 
discussion. 

In no other country do we find the strands 
of Jewish history so intimately and con- 
tinually interwoven with the general fabric 
as here in America. This is due partly to the 
newness of the country and the early arrival 

77 



of Jewish settlers. Even in the study of 
Palestine, we find that there was a time 
when it contained no Jewish inhabitants, and 
various strata of civilization already had dis- 
appeared when the Jews took possession. As 
for America, however, the Jew's activity is 
co-extensive with the history of her civihza- 
tion. 

I shall not dwell here on the well-known 
fact that Jews were associated with Colum- 
bus in his voyage of discovery, that Jews 
supported his enterprise financially and 
scientifically, and that a Marrano Jew is said 
to have been the first member of Colum- 
bus's crew to step on the soil of the New 
World. But it is certain that from the very 
days of the discovery, Jews became frequent 
on the American continent, first in South 
and Central America, and later on in North 
America. 

The finding of the New World offered 
timely compensation for the expulsion from 
Spain, and Israel lost no time in transferring 
his genius for enterprise and continuity, 
both material and spiritual, to the new field 
so providentially opened. 

78 



By the middle of the seventeenth century, 
we see the beginnings of Jewish migration to 
North America, owing primarily to vicissi- 
tudes of war in South America, and as that 
was the time when Enghsh civilization began 
to establish itself here, the form of civiliza- 
tion destined to remain permanent, we can 
see with what right we may speak of 
the continuity of Jewish history in our 
Kepublic. 

It is true that the number of Jews at first 
was small, but before long their influence 
and service transcended their proportions. 
During the Revolution, there were only 
about two thousand Jews in the Colonies; 
yet, some of them had become so prominent, 
that their help was not inconsiderable, and 
in several instances of conspicuous and un- 
forgettable merit. We know, for example, 
that Washington had an aide who was a Jew, 
Isaac Franks, that one of the earliest officers 
of our ISTavy was a Jew, Uriah Levy, and that 
a Jew, Haym Salomon, an immigrant from 
Poland, helped the Revolution financially, 
aside from what similar help he extended to 
some of the heroes of the Revolution indi- 

79 



vidually, thus rendering it easier for them to 
do their share of the common task. Aside 
from what these instances may mean in 
themselves, they are important for the hght 
they throw on the rapidity with which Jew- 
ish settlers made their way in this country, 
on the completeness of their civil and politi- 
cal assimilation, and on their pubhc promi- 
nence in the early days of American history. 

What progress the Jew has made in 
America since those days, he who runs may 
read. On the material side, she certainly has 
become a land of promise to miUions of Jews. 
Gradually the Jewish population has grown 
to its present dimensions. During the nine- 
teenth century the original immigration from 
mainly Sephardic sources, with an admixture 
from Poland, was supplemented by a wave 
of migration from German provinces. In the 
latter part of the nineteenth century, finally, 
the intense persecutions in Eastern Europe 
poured enormous waves of migration onto 
these shores. As a result of these successive 
movements of people, unprecedented in some 
respects in human history, millions of Jews 

80 



have settled in our Republic, and, on the 
material side at least, it has become to them 
a veritable land of promise. 

In all departments of life the' Jew has 
prospered. It may be questioned whether 
ever in the past he has been blessed with 
such success. While it is erroneous to as- 
sume, as some people do, that all Jews are 
rich, or that the richest men are Jews (as- 
sumptions which are contradicted by facts), 
it is true that nowhere else have the Jewish 
people been given such an unhampered op- 
portunity for advancement and such an un- 
restricted field of work and usefulness. 

As a result, Jews are found in every 
sphere of work, in every honorable and use- 
ful occupation. In commerce, in the liberal 
and practical professions, in all the various 
forms of industry, the American Jew is 
found, and many have achieved eminent suc- 
cess. 'No longer can it be said, as they were 
wont to say of old, that the Jew is nothing 
but a usurer or a trader. In America hun- 
dreds of thousands of Jews work with their 
hands, there are numerous trade unions en- 
tirely composed of Jews, and nothing is 

81 



more significant in this regard than that the 
President of the American Federation of 
Labor for years has been a Jew ( at least, a 
man born a Jew) . 

It used to be said that the Jew will not be 
a farmer. Even if elsewhere the Jew had not 
disproved this assertion, he has done so on 
American soil, where numerous Jewish f am- 
ihes have settled on farms and demonstrated 
their fitness to succeed even under adverse 
conditions. 

What America has done for the material 
progress of millions of Jews is one of the 
marvels of history — a marvel augmented by 
the moral transformation which has accom- 
panied the process. Men, who for generations 
had been hounded and haunted by persecu- 
tion, who had been engrafted with all the 
moral evils of persecution, who had been 
humihated and all but crushed — millions 
of such men by the liberty and humanity 
of America have been freed from the 
old chains, purged of the old stains, 
turned into free, strong, courageous, self-re- 
liant, and self-respecting human beings. For 
this transformation we can never be suffi- 

82 



ciently thankful, as it must ever continue to 
excite the admiration and the wonder of the 
world. 

But the spiritual achievements of the Jew 
in America have been no less significant. 

Now and then on this score we hear la- 
ments. Material progress, we are told, has 
occurred in American Israel at the expense 
of his spiritual life, and lurid pictures are 
drawn of our spiritual estate. It is even 
maintained that there is no hope for us 
spiritually in America, and that for this pur- 
pose we must turn our eyes to other parts. 

Let us not forget, however, that spiritual 
pessimism is nothing new, whether among 
Jews or non-Jews. There have always been 
men who have thought their own time and 
place to be the worst-off spiritually in his- 
tory. The student of history and hterature 
finds many such resemblances through the 
centuries, and there is nothing said about 
our present-day spiritual and moral degene- 
ration that might not be paralleled in the 
hterature of previous generations, to which 

83 



we sometimes look back as the very embodi- 
ment of virtue and spirituality. 

But pessimism apart — nor is self-criticism 
altogether undesirable — we may say that 
spiritually also the Jew in America has 
achieved no mean things. The very fact that 
we have succeeded in transplanting Judaism 
to this country, so different from the Old 
World, is an achievement of importance. 
And the transplanting has been rapid. 
There have been losses, quite naturally, but 
there have been gains, too, and, whatever is 
said to the contrary, there is an intense and 
manifold Jewish activity in this country to- 
day unsurpassed anywhere else, though per- 
haps only the historian of the future will 
acknowledge it, just as our historians today 
laud the glories of the past. 

When we think of our educational institu- 
tions, of our Rabbinical colleges, of our his- 
torical associations, of our synagogues, of 
such an achievement as the Jewish Encyclo- 
pedia and its counterpart in the Hebrew 
language, and many other enterprises, we 
cannot help but wonder that in so short a 
time the Jews of America should have done 

84 



as much as they have in the spiritual sphere, 
particularly when we recall that the last half- 
century was a period of sceptism and materi- 
alism, which put all Rehgion on the defen- 
sive, and which made the course of Judaism 
in this country, and the process of re-adjust- 
ment, so much more difficult than it might 
have been. 

It is this spiritual and material advance of 
the American Jew that has made it possible 
for him time and again to come to the rescue 
of his fellow-Jews in other countries. It 
would take us too far afield to go into detail. 
But no survey of the connection of America 
with the Jew is adequate without at least a 
reminder of how America championed the 
rights of her Jewish citizens in Switzerland 
and Russia, and of how she intervened in be- 
half of persecuted Jews in Damascus and in 
Morocco, in Rumania and in Russia. 

When the history of the emancipation of 
the Jews is written, a place of honor surely 
will be accorded to the help rendered by 
America, through some of her foremost and 
most humane statesmen, from Theodore Fay 

85 



to John Hay, and through the energy and 
self-sacrifice of her Jewish citizens. 

'Nor would our survey be sufficient without 
a reference to the patriotism of the Amer- 
ican Jew. If the patriotism of the Jew has 
been proved in every country, nowhere has 
it been more ardent and ready than here. 
We know the early story of Asser Levy who 
insisted on his right to stand guard hke 
every other citizen of New Amsterdam, 
rather than be exempted and taxed. He is 
the patriotic prototype of the American Jew 
in every age and crisis, in peace and in war. 
Whoever doubts the patriotism of the Amer- 
ican Jew, does not know him. And never 
was the Jew of America more ready than to- 
day to do his patriotic duty, to make all the 
sacrifices demanded by the hour, to stand 
guard for the Republic and for Democracy. 
This he has shown already, and is going to 
continue to show, as the War goes on. 

A word about the future. Now and then 
questions are asked about the future of the 
Jew in America. Will he live on? Will he 
continue in his present fortunate condition? 

86 



We hear murmurs about a nascent anti-Se- 
mitism, and what not. To all these questions 
there is but one answer: It depends upon 
ourselves! Let us think of the noble words 
of George Washington in his reply to the 
address presented to him by the Jewish 
community of Newport in the year 1790. 
"It is no more," he said, "that toleration is 
spoken of, as if it were by the indulgence of 
one class of people that another enjoyed the 
exercise of their inherent natural rights. For 
happily the Government of the United 
States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, 
to persecution no assistance, requires only 
that they who hve under its protection 
should demean themselves as good citizens, 
in giving it on all occasions their effectual 
support." 

The Jew has nothing to fear from anti- 
Semitism in America. It amounts to noth- 
ing, except in so far as we help create it. 
What counts is our own life and what 
we do for the maintenance of democracy in 
America and elsewhere. As long as we do 
our duty, as long as we remain true to the 
best moral and spiritual traditions of the 

87 



Jew, as long as we stand for the noblest 
ideals of citizenship, and as long as America 
remains what her founders designed and 
dreamed her to be — the home and the hope 
of democracy — so long the Jew will be safe 
for America and America will be safe for 
the Jew ! 



88 



VII 

THE WAR, THE JEW, AND THE 
FUTURE 

ONE of the chief benefits of the study of 
the past is that it throws hght on the 
problems of the present and helps us to fore- 
cast the future. This is why during the ter- 
rible struggle that has been going on, so 
many of us have turned to the records of his- 
tory for help and direction. It is no less true 
of our Jewish history. When we engage in 
a survey of it, and especially in a study of its 
course in the alhed countries, it is not merely 
for the purpose of refreshing our memories 
of what happened in days gone by, but also 
in order to learn what we might expect to 
happen in the future and to be fortified in 
our duty today. "Universal History," says 
Lord Acton, "is not a rope of sand but a 
continuous development; not a burden on 
memory, but an illumination of the soul." 

The survey of the course of Jewish history 
convinces us, first of all, that nothing has 

89 



been so helpful and profitable to the Jew as 
the progress of democracy. From of old 
Jewish progress and democracy have gone 
hand in hand. Every now and then we hear 
people complain that the Jew is not demo- 
cratic. This has as much truth in it as the 
off-hand charge that the Jew is not patriotic 
or not ideahstic. It is a generality unsup- 
ported by the facts. 

Much more true it is to say that the genius 
of Judaism has from the first been essentially 
democratic, and that it expressed itself in 
democratic institutions and personalities 
even in remote antiquity, when the world at 
large was predominantly aristocratic. The 
Decalogue was a democratic code. The 
Tor ah was democratic in form and ideal. 
And no group of men ever were more repre- 
sentative of democracy in every way — in 
origin, conduct, and purpose — than the Jew- 
ish prophets. 

No one can consider these fundamental 
facts of Jewish history, and what followed 
from them, without realizing the justice of 
the affirmation that the Jewish genius has 
been essentially democratic and that it has 

90 



made important contributions to the ad- 
vance of democracy in the world. 

On the other hand, the progress of dem- 
ocracy has made everywhere for the advance- 
ment and appreciation of the Jew ; and this 
is one of the most valuable and encouraging 
lessons we gain from a study of the past. 
In France, in England, in Italy, in Russia, 
in America — everywhere the promotion of 
the democratic spirit and law are followed, 
sooner or later, often promptly, by removal 
of Jewish disabihties and recognition of the 
rights and powers of the Jew. A country, or 
a leader, could not be democratic and fail 
sooner or later to acknowledge what was due 
to the Jew. This is why all champions of 
democracy were advocates of the rights of 
the Jews — ^Montesquieu and Mirabeau, 
Cromwell and Macauley, Cavour and Maz- 
zini, Uvaroff and Milyukoff, Washington, 
and every other pioneer and hero of demo- 
cracy. Gladstone in his early days was op- 
posed to the removal of Jewish disabilities, 
but as a hberal, he was certain finally to 
turn to the right view, the only view com- 

91 



patible with the ideals of justice and Hberty, 
which are at the core of every democratic 
f eehng and force. 

What follows? It follows as the night the 
day that the Jew has a perfect right to look 
to democracy for a further vindication of his 
rights and his place in the world — to hope 
that the more certain and secure the future 
of democracy in the world, the more 
certain and secure shall be the future of the 
Jew. Some superficial and servile people 
may contend that it does not matter what 
kind of government a country has, or under 
what kind of government we hve; the 
student of history knows that it does matter, 
that the difference is vital, and if not appar- 
ent at any particular moment, certainly clear 
as the sun in the course of time. 

Triumphant democracy will lead to full 
recognition of the citizenship of the Jew in 
every country. Apart from basic principles, 
what the Jew has done during the War can- 
not fail to earn for him such citizen recog- 
nition and complete incorporation in the sev- 
eral nations that are now fighting for Hfe 

92 



and liberty. The Jew has always been a 
patriot, but his patriotic devotion, service, 
and self-sacrifice shown in the present War 
has never been surpassed and in point of 
magnitude and scope never equaled. The 
effect of it will be the abatement of anti- 
Jewish prejudice and suspicion, increased 
respect for the Jew, and complete recogni- 
tion of his position and rights as a citizen 
everywhere. 

Maurice Barres, a former anti-Semite, has 
called attention to this effect that the War 
has akeady had in France ; but it is destined 
to produce the same effect in every country 
in which the end of the War will make for 
the triumph of democracy. 

Democracy, however, means not only 
recognition, but also responsibihty, duty as 
well as rights, service as well as privilege. 
Jewish history teaches nothing so clearly as 
that the Jew has persisted not so much be- 
cause of what the world has done for him, as 
because of what he has done for the world. 
The Jew has served. Through light and 
gloom, amid flood and flame, in days happy 

93 



or adverse, the Jew has served. He has 
toiled for mankind. Ebed Adonay — God's 
servant, he was called by the ancient Pro- 
phet; and such he has been — God's servant 
among men, with whose bruises others were 
healed, and by whose affictions others were 
taught and ennobled. 

This is why when Democracy finally arose 
and demanded the freedom of the Jew, there 
could be no doubt as to his merit and his 
right. And in the future, too, the Jew will 
have to continue to serve and to bestow upon 
the world those benefits for which he was 
created. 

It is foolish to think that the Jew's pro- 
blem can be solved in terms merely of happi- 
ness and comfort for himself. Not for that 
was he created. It can be solved in terms 
only of service — of service to the world! 
The Jew will never be able to run away from 
recognition of this fact, which is of the very 
essence of his soul and his existence. 

With the coming of his complete recogni- 
tion as citizen, will come the increased spirit- 
ual responsibility of the Jew. Not only will 
he have to take part in the pohtical and 
economic reshaping of the world. He will 

94 



have to justify his spiritual isolation or sep- 
arateness. He will be called upon to make 
his Kehgion, his peculiar spiritual ideal, 
count in that spiritual and religious recon- 
struction which the world will need after the 
War. 

Is there no balm in Gilead? Has the Jew's 
Religion nothing to contribute to the heahng 
of mankind's spiritual wounds? If so, the 
days of his Rehgion are numbered. But if 
it has, as we proclaim it has, then the 
Jew will have his part to play, and his duty 
to perform, when upon the coming of peace 
mankind starts to set up again the fallen 
tabernacles — enters upon the process of re- 
ligious and spiritual reconstruction. 

And this duty and part the Jew will have 
not in one corner only — not in one only se- 
cluded, far-off spot, but everywhere, in the 
midst of the world, amid the storm and stress 
of the world's life, amid the agony of human 
suffering and need, where every other Reli- 
gion will be at work, and men will be en- 
gaged in the momentous tasks of rebuilding 
and rejuvenation. 

There are those who indulge in the sweet, 
idyllic dream of the Jew departing from the 

95 



common strife of mankind and betaking 
himself to Zion, and there, amid bueohe sur- 
roundings, developing into a spiritual entity 
the hke of which has never been on land or 
sea. A pleasant dream, this ! But history is 
against it. History shows that although the 
classical period of the Jew lay in Palestine, 
since then the Jewish genius has flourished 
and produced its best fruits in lands other 
than Palestine. 

It is idle to expect reproductions of class- 
ical periods. The very contact with the rest 
of the world, the very friction with other 
men's thoughts, the very variety of environ- 
ment, has made for the vitality and versa- 
tihty of Israel's genius. And in the future, 
also, it is in the world at large that the Jew 
will be called upon to serve, and to prove his 
capacity and his commission as a factor in 
the spiritual advancement and the moral up- 
building of the human race. 

This is not to say that there may not or shall 
not be a new centre of Jewish life and glory 
in the old land of Israel's fathers, in Pales- 
tine. On the contrary, we all pray there may 
be! Every loyal Jewish heart is bound to 

96 



Palestine, and no true Jew but wants to see 
it restored and renewed as a place of beauty 
and of joy. If upon the close of the War, 
Jews, under proper guarantees, are allowed 
to settle in Palestine as a matter of right and 
not merely as a favor, let us hope that those 
who migrate there, directed by necessity or 
idealism, will find their heart's desire and 
will develop a life of which the world and 
the Jew might be justly proud. Toward the 
securing of such safeguards we ought all to 
work together. It must form one of the 
fruits of the War. 

But to think that the resettlement or re- 
construction of Palestine is going to dispose 
of the universal Jewish problem, is a chimera. 
We need but think of the difficulties that will 
surround the new settlement, difficulties of a 
political and rehgious, as well as of an eco- 
nomic, character — of the small number of 
Jews the country will be able to absorb, of 
the many years it will take before Palestine 
can support in comfort as many as even a 
million Jews — we need but think of the large 
number of Jews who do not believe in the 
formation of a separate Jewish nation, to 

97 



realize that they who assume that the crea- 
tion of a new centre, and particularly of a 
Jewish State, in Palestine would wholly 
solve the Jewish problem, feed on flowers of 
phantasy. 

The Jew's place is in the world at large, 
the world now engaged in the most moment- 
ous struggle of history, and in the world at 
large he will have to show that capacity for 
service which will justify his past and make 
his future secure and glorious ! 

In such a spirit let us dedicate ourselves 
to the defense of democracy and the cham- 
pionship of Judaism. In such a spirit let us 
bear the burdens of the War. Many of our 
dear ones are engaged in the actual combat. 
Let us take pride in their sacrifices ! Let us 
call those blessed who shall outlive this com- 
bat and be allowed a part in the reconstruc- 
tion of the future. May they help in the pro- 
motion of democracy, in the perpetuation of 
Judaism, in the advancement of those forces 
of liberty, justice, and brotherhood which 
are destined some day to bring peace and 
joy and good- will to the world! 

98 



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